


The Scenic Route

by orphan_account



Series: How to Fall In Love With A Human [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 04:53:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5362148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	The Scenic Route

Kara had been avoiding Cat’s eye contact for the last few weeks.  Cat had stopped bringing her places outside of work.  It was back to photocopying and shepherding layouts back and forth between James’s department and Cat’s desk, fetching lattes and salads, bearing with a stiff smile Cat’s insistent mispronouncing of her name, pretending it didn’t bother her.  Back to grunt work during the day and saving people in the evening.  Back to mucking about with the DEO and chasing dangerous aliens.  Back to game nights and cheap Chinese food with Wynn, going so far as to briefly entertain the baleful, smitten looks he’d give her when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.  Why not, if you’re that lonely? she demanded of herself.  Wynn was cute.  He was sweet.  

But he was no Cat Grant.

Cat Grant looked like a magazine cover every single day.  Her clothes were flawless and her hair looked perfect and the whole thing looked effortless.  She casually dispensed advice that changed Kara’s life on a weekly basis.  She suffered no fools and, despite, or maybe due to, being tough to work for, constantly brought the best out of Kara.  She was on a first-name basis with important, powerful people and acted like it was no big deal.  She had shown Kara a glimpse of the kind of power and privilege she had; opulent parties, important guests, the ability to pick up the phone and get a senator or congressman on the other end if she felt like it.  She was tough, confident, and… and Kara needed to stop blushing when she thought about it all.  It was really becoming a problem.

It didn’t help that she really looked great in those skirts and heels.

It was as though that kiss they shared on the observation deck of Catco Plaza had opened a door that, try as she might, she couldn’t seem to shut.

“Kiera!  Come in here, please!”  

Kara frowned.  Why did she insist on doing that?  She walked into Cat’s office, arms drawn tightly to her ribs, clutching a folder of something so that she didn’t look too much like she was just trying to shrink into herself.  “Yes, Miss Grant?”

Cat didn’t look up from whatever was on her laptop screen.  “I’m going to the West Coast Correspondent’s Dinner tomorrow night, and my date has apparently has the flu.  It won’t do for me to have an empty seat next to me, so you’re going to have to accompany me.”

Kara, caught by surprise, tried to protest, though she wasn’t sure why.  “But I have plans tomorrow night–”

Cat looked up at her.  “Don’t be stupid, Kiera.  Every reporter in this building would give their left gonad to go to the West Coast Correspondent’s Dinner.  Look, Rachel Maddow will probably be there, you two can bond over those terrible glasses you both wear.”  

Kara squirmed.  Was Cat really asking her to just come along as a seat warmer?  Was something going to happen again?  Was she even ready to be at a thing like this without embarrassing herself?

Gazing back down at her computer, Cat added dryly, “This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘yes, Miss Grant, thank you, I’m very excited for this opportunity’.”

“And… and I am…” Kara stammered. “It’s just I…”  She scrambled.  She wasn’t sure why she was nervous about it exactly.  “I don’t have anything to wear.”

Cat looked up and sighed.  “Of course.  I’d just give you the company card to go pick something up but clearly if you had someone in your life who could do something about…”  She waved in the general direction of Kara's ensemble.  “...that… they’d have done it already.  I’ll have to take you myself.  What’s on my schedule for this afternoon?”

Kara gulped.  “Um, budget meeting with senior management from 3-4:30, phoner with the Sultan of Brunei at 5:00, and then you had me pencil in meeting the marketing department at their monthly dinner at Serrano’s at 6:30.”

Cat rolled her eyes.  “I think I can live without eating eggplant parmagiana on a toothpick with Frank Greenberg.  Take that out.  And call the nanny and tell her I need her to stay late.  I’m taking you shopping.”

**

 

Kara felt like she wanted to die.  The tiny boutique Cat had brought her to was not someplace Kara would ever be able to shop in her wildest dreams.  She gingerly fingered a white silk drapey something hanging on a mannequin.  

“Ugh, no,” Cat interjected.  “Not with your coloring.”

Meekly, Kara put her hands behind her back.

Cat did a slow, three hundred sixty degree turn, absorbing in one glance everything hanging in the place.   “There,” she said, and marched over to a dress in the corner of the room.  It was a sapphire blue evening dress with a sweetheart neck and a cross-wrapped waist, one shoulder embellished with a silvery clasp.  The fabric shimmered subtly and looked incredibly soft.  “Kara, what size are you?”

“Um, six?”

“Mmph, at Old Navy, maybe.”   She waved to the clerk, a poised young woman dressed as impeccably as Cat was.  “Marta, can you get us this in a ten, please?”

“Ten??” Kara exclaimed.

“Sshh,”  Cat admonished.  “This is not my first rodeo, dear.”

Kara stood in the dressing room, fretting, for a long time after she’d got the dress on.  It didn’t look bad.  It looked incredible, actually.  It was certainly the nicest thing that had ever been on her body, and might well be the nicest thing that ever would be.  The material… it was soft and thick, and slipped between her fingers, clung to her curves without overexposing them, and felt like the definition of luxury.  She looked… well, sexy.  Classy.  At this point, Cat had seen her a few times in her Supergirl outfit, which Kara supposed was sexy in its own way, but not like this.

“Did the dress eat you?” Cat’s voice demanded from outside the fitting room.

“No, no, I’m coming,” Kara called back, trying to keep the nervousness from her voice.

She stepped out shyly and did an awkward little turn.  “Well?”

Cat fixed her with a long look that was impossible for Kara to read.  “Good,” she said at last.

“Yes, very nice,” Marta agreed.

“Ring it up please, Marta.”

  


***

 

The West Coast’s Correspondent’s Dinner was sort of the little brother of the White House Press Club dinners in Washington; held at the National City W Hotel, it was packed with journalists, politicians, a few high-profile entertainers, and a well-known comedian to skewer everyone in the room without saying anything too offensive.  She and Cat arrived in a limousine and ended up seated at a table with a few senators, a Sulzberger, and a rapper whose name Kara didn’t recognize but Cat seemed very friendly with.  Cat was stunning in a black Versace with a plunging neckline and a pair of dangerously high Jimmy Choos that she seemed to have no difficulty walking in whatsoever, with her hair swept up and a string of pearls softly glowing on her chest.  

Despite  being unable to hide her thrill at being there, Kara managed to not say anything tragically stupid, and even held an intelligent conversation with Hillary Clinton’s famously poised, beautiful aide, Huma Abedin, who was flying solo this evening without her boss or husband, and happy for the conversation.  It turned out that working for Cat Grant wasn’t so different from working for Hillary, but Huma made the point that Hillary was good about rewarding people who could measure up to her demands, and assured her in a friendly way that Cat Grant was probably much the same.  “They’re kind of cut from the same cloth, you know?  Actually, didn’t Miss Grant go to Wellesley too?”

Kara was fairly sure that she had.

Kara was extremely pleased when Huma complimented her dress, and quick to confess that Cat had picked it out and bought it for her.

When the evening found them back in the limousine, Kara was giddy and full of stories about all the conversations she’d had, and Cat was full of martinis.  

“You did well,” she told Kara, as the valet closed the door and the motor rumbled softly, dragging the limousine away from the curb.  “You didn’t embarrass me.  I saw you talking to Huma Abedin.”

“Oh, yeah!” Kara enthused.  “She was so terrific!  She was really nice, and we had a great conversation about–”

“–whose boss was harder to work for?”  Cat interrupted with a little smirk.

Kara’s mouth dropped open.  “No!” she reflexively exclaimed.  “OK, well… yes, a little, but that wasn’t all we talked about.”

“Who won?”

“Come on, Miss Grant, Hillary has nothing on you,” Kara teased. She’d seen Cat in a six martini mood before and was in such a good mood herself, she didn’t feel the need to restrain herself.

“Good,” Cat sniffed. “I’d hate to think I was failing you.”

“But ANYWAY,”  Kara went on, “she told me this incredible story, about how one time, when she and Hillary were in Russia, and they were supposed to meet with Putin, and -- do you know, by the way, I think she speaks like four languages or something-- anyway, but they were supposed to meet with Putin, and they were at the hotel, and--”

Without warning, Cat turned to her, leaned forward, and did that thing again.  Kissed her on the lips, lightly, without warning, and for not nearly long enough.  She pulled back.  “Calm down, Kara.  You’re talking too much.”

Kara didn’t hesitate this time. She leaned forward and kissed her back, and this time, lingered against her mouth, making it last as long she had wanted it to the first time.

She pulled back to look at her.  They exchanged a look for two beats and then Kara leaned in to kiss her again, but Cat put a finger up to her lips. “Wait,” she said.  She pushed the call button to the front of  the limousine.  “Seamus, can you take the scenic route, please?”

The chauffeur’s voice crackled back through the little speaker.  “What route is that, Miss Grant?”

“I don’t know, just something needlessly circuitous.  Preferably along the water, okay?”

He gave a baffled chuckle.  “Sure, Miss Grant.”

Cat turned back to her with a pleased little smile playing around her mouth.  “You were about to say?”

Kara grinned and leaned forward and kissed her boss.  She felt the warmth of her lips and felt her push back against the kiss.  She felt Cat’s hand come up and settle lightly against her cheek.  It was all still slow and very light, tentative, but the longer it lasted, the less tentative it became.  Cat pulled back and looked at her.  “Kara…”

“Oh, so now you know my name,” Kara jested, feeling bold.

Cat’s other hand came up to Kara’s face and pulled her back in, where they remained a few moments more, slowly tasting each others’ mouths, trying to figure out what the energy was between them.  Cat pulled back again.  “Are you sure this is alright with you?  I know I bought you a dress that costs more than your car and brought you to a place filled with people you’d likely never meet in your life any other way, but… I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“Calm down, Miss Grant, you’re talking too much,”  Kara answered, and kissed her again.  Yes, she was high on the evening, but she’d wanted nothing besides this since the first time it happened up in the observation deck.

She was afraid she was doing it wrong, but Cat didn’t seem to be complaining, so she let herself go, tried to put everything she was feeling into the way she mingled her lips with Cat’s… how much she wanted this, how much she admired Cat, how nervous she was, all of it.  How much she wanted her to respect her, how much she wanted to just … have her, have whatever that thing was that people got to have when they fell for each other.  That she was ready for her, that she wasn’t too small or too scared.

She heard Cat making little sighing noises as they kissed, felt her fingers touching her face, her neck, gripping her shoulders.  She felt Cat’s tongue in her mouth, running over her lips.  Felt the little nips of her teeth follow after it.  She wished she could feel it all more clearly but she already felt the need in her gut was too strong.  She settled a hand on Cat’s knee, her thumb rubbing slowly at the inside of her leg.  

After a moment more (she couldn’t say exactly how long), Cat pulled back again and looked at her.  “Exactly where do you think this is going?” she demanded.

Kara laughed.  “I don’t know, you kissed me first!”

“Yes,” Cat acknowledged grumpily, “but...  Your hand??”  She gestured down at Kara’s hand, which had, without Kara really noticing, drifted a bit further up Cat’s thigh than Kara had realized.

Kara had to admit that she was feeling something that definitely felt like desire, but also just pure and simple curiosity; did women respond to things the way men did?  How exactly did you make love to a woman, anyway?  Did Cat Grant make a lot of noise if you touched her the right way or was she super silent, the way some guys were?  What would she look like if you got her feeling really, really good?  What did her body look like underneath those clothes?

This really hadn’t been conscious or intentional, though.  She looked at her hand, trying not to appear too sheepish.  “What happened to, be assertive, go after what I want?” she joked.  Or more like, half-joked.

“Yes, but that’s only when I want you to!”  Cat exclaimed with exasperation.

Kara laughed again.  “OK, I’m really confused now.”

“So am I,” Cat snapped, “let’s go back to the other thing.”  She pulled Kara back in and kissed her again.  

They kissed some more, still soft, still exploratory, Kara still not quite sure if it was all meshing right or not, but feeling like she wanted it to, and that Cat did too.  

“You really looked stunning tonight, you know,” Cat mumbled against her lips at one point.

“A sincere compliment?” Kara mumbled back between kisses.  “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Just take the damn compliment,” Cat answered.

Kara’s heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest.  She wanted to explore more of Cat's body.  She wanted to hear again and again from Cat’s lips that she looked beautiful.  “Yeah, but you always look stunning.”

“Oh, knock it off, Kara, I’m too old for you.”

Kara remained aware of her hand, which was still resting on Cat’s thigh, and the fact that Cat’s passion was slowly increasing.  She wanted this, and didn’t want it.  She stopped and looked at her seriously.  “Miss Grant…”

“For heaven’s sake, we’ve been necking for twenty minutes, you can call me Cat.”

“Cat…” Kara amended.  “I...I’m really, really attracted to you.  I am,”  she began carefully.  “I just… I don’t know what you want from me.  I don’t know if I’m just a toy for you or… or if you see something in me that you think you want to get closer to… and… well, that’s it.  I don’t know what you want from me.”

Cat sighed and looked back at her with an unfamiliar fondness.  “I don’t know what I want from you, either, Kara.  It’s not fair to you, I know that.”

Kara wasn’t sure how to respond.  “I mean, you do these incredible things for me, you know, but then… half the time you can’t even get my name right,” she sighed.

Cat smiled strangely.  “Well, come on, you know what that’s about, don’t you?”

Kara shook her head.  

“Kara, I do that to you to keep some distance from you emotionally.”  The six martinis were making her unusually frank, even by her own impressive standards of frankness.

Kara looked at her for a moment, speechless.  “OK, but now that I know that, doesn’t it take away some of the effect?” she asked after a long, bewildered pause.

“Of course it does.  That’s why I told you.”

Kara’s head was spinning.  She’d chastise Cat for being lousy at intimacy but the fact was, she wasn’t much better at it herself, albeit in different ways.

“And what do _you_ want from _me_ , little mouse?” Cat challenged, and there was a note of flirtation in it.

“The same things as always.  Your advice.  Your respect.  Your kindness, when you can manage it.  And… you know… the kissing is really nice too.”  She gave a shy smile.  

Cat made a little half-chuckle, half-huffing sound, smiling that six martini smile at her.  “Most girls would ask for a promotion right about now.”

Kara smiled.  “I told you, I’m really attracted to you.  I didn’t kiss you back because it was a career opportunity.  You’re just hot, ok?”

Cat’s look made Kara’s chest ache.  “I don’t want to hurt you, Kara.  And I don’t want to take advantage of our professional relationship.  I want to help you grow.”

Kara took her hand.  “There’s more than one way to do that.”

Cat shifted in the leather seat, and drew Kara’s arm around herself, leaning in to rest her head on Kara’s shoulder.  “You know I still barely know anything about you,” she yawned, gazing out the window and watching the lights sparkle along the water.  Seamus had chosen the freeway, and it was gorgeous at night.  “Which big square state did you say you were from?”

Kara enjoyed Cat leaning on her this way.  “Minnesota,” she sighed.

“Oh,”  Cat remarked after a moment.  “Well, that’s not so bad, but I couldn’t deal with all the snow.  But I guess you have Minneapolis, which is sort of like a city.”

“We gave the world Prince, you know,” Kara pointed out, unable to keep from sounding defensive.  

Cat’s hand settled on Kara’s leg in a not entirely platonic way, but without specific intention either.  “Yeah, yeah, but he just had a hip replacement, for crying out loud.  What have you done for us _lately_?”

Kara smiled.  “We have the country’s biggest ball of twine?” she suggested.

“Bullshit,” Cat retorted.  “I’ve seen the country’s biggest ball of twine, it’s in Kansas.”

There was no giant ball of twine in Minnesota.  Or Kansas, as far as Kara knew.  “Bullshit yourself,” she shot back, “I don’t buy for a single second that you ever once set your Jimmy Choos down in Kansas.”

Cat smiled, and burrowed her head more comfortably into Kara’s shoulder.  

They’d established nothing, and yet somehow, it felt good.  It felt like they’d said what they needed to right now.  They rode the rest of the way to Cat’s place in silence.


End file.
